


Off the Beaten Path

by Butterfly



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alien Planet, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:10:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfly/pseuds/Butterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint has been captured; Tony and Natasha are on the trail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off the Beaten Path

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chosenfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chosenfire/gifts).



> Written for chosenfire28 (livejournal) in the Avengers Holiday Exchange.

Tony resisted the urge to punch the featureless ice wall in front of him. It wouldn't help anything and he might get his arm stuck again and need to blast his way out, which was always faintly embarrassing.

One of his comm lines crackled open and he heard Natasha ask, "Iron Man, do you copy?" He could hear the crunching of the ice around her, even through the static on the line. He couldn’t see worth a damn in the snow storm and she was buried so deep that his sensors were having a hard time locking onto her exact position. The howling of the wind almost drowned out her voice as she continued, “I found one of the portals and I could use you here to verify.”

“Copy that. I'm on my way to you."

After JARVIS finally located her, Tony guided himself down into the ice fissure, hovering above the unstable ledge of compacted snow she was using as a platform.

On the other wall of the fissure, the tunnel in space flickered at the edges. It looked like it led out onto level ground. It was hard to see the world beyond—this portal wasn’t stable like the one that Loki had managed to create four years ago.

"It's got the right readings," Tony said. "Want me to fly you through and then get the others?"

"No time," she said. "It's shrinking by the minute. It'd be gone by the time you get back with anyone. If you want to come with me, we have to go soon."

Tony glanced at one of his displays and it was telling him the same thing. The portal was decreasing in size far too rapidly. He thought quickly. "I'll be right back," he told her, then he zipped up above the fissure, sending out a message on all their channels, "We found the portal but it's closing fast. Widow and I are going through. Patching the coordinates to SHIELD now. Follow if you can."

He darted back down to where Natasha was waiting and held out his hand to her. "Ready?"

She grabbed onto him, carefully balancing on his suit. "Ready."

Taking her at her word, he took them both through the portal.

The world they’d left behind had been almost deafening with sound—this one was more silent than any place Tony had ever been. The only sounds he could hear were the noises that he and Natasha were making. The ground looked stable enough, so he set Natasha down and concentrated on getting JARVIS to search for Clint's signal beacon. She immediately started taking off some of her outerwear, wrapping it up tightly and putting it into her bag. She rubbed at her face, mouth reddened by the chill of the Arctic winter they'd left behind.

The portal was continuing to narrow, already too small for him to fit back through. They were on their own for now.

After Natasha was down to her bodysuit, she started doing a weapons check. Tony flew up into the sky, trying to get a feel for the landscape. It was level here but over in the south, he could see gently rolling hills, covered with some kind of vegetation. Nothing familiar to him. He pivoted, watching the hills turn back into the flat plain that stretch to the east and north for as long as he could see. The west, the direction they'd come out of the portal, seemed to slope downward and he could see more ground cover that way.

A moment later and JARVIS had a reading on Clint's tracker. South-west, fairly distant. He tried to have JARVIS bring up Clint's earpiece but got no response.

He landed back on the ground, letting his visor lift so that Natasha could see his face. He had to blink once his faceplate was open because, holy shit, the sky was green. The actual sky above their heads was grass-green.

"We're on an alien planet. That is... something. Wow," Tony said. Natasha didn't look impressed. "Actual planet with... how are we breathing? How can the atmospheric composition of this planet be breathable?"

"Oxygen levels are running at roughly twenty-five percent of the total atmosphere, Sir, with nothing unduly toxic to human life," JARVIS answered. "Though I wouldn't recommend staying for longer than a month. I believe that would prove taxing on your system. However, you may be of a greater danger to the life here than the air is to you—I suspect the various pathogens and bacteria present in your system to be far more robust than anything existing on this world."

"I'll keep all that in mind," Tony said. Natasha raised her eyebrow and he shrugged. "I've got a pin on Hawkeye," he told her, holding his hand out again. The portal was just a slash of light now. Hopefully the next one would open back up in Greenland too or SHIELD would have a hell of a time finding it in time to send anyone else through to help. "That way," he said, with a wave of his hand.

"Does he still have company?" she asked, letting him slide his arm around her waist this time. It made holding onto her a bit easier.

"Guess we'll find out."

It took him almost half an hour to fly to Clint's location.

Or, to be more precise, to fly to the location of Clint's torn-off tracker.

"Son of a bitch," Tony muttered.

Natasha held the beacon up and shook it once, almost forlornly, like that would magically make Clint appear.

"So, we have no idea how long he's been gone," she said. "This rescue op could be going better. Sorry, Stark. I may have made the wrong call back there. Maybe you should have gone for the others after all."

"And let you go through alone?" Tony snorted, bringing his face-plate up again. "Fat chance. Buddy-system, Widow. No child left behind and all that." He lifted up and spun around, taking in the scenery.

The grass—or grass-like plants—were tinted vaguely reddish. Part of him wanted to scoop up samples to take home and analyze. He voiced the thought to Natasha and she actually pulled some empty vials out of her bag that she filled with soil and some bits of plantlife.

"Is there anything you _don't_ have in there?" Tony asked. She shrugged, like it wasn't any big deal, and slipped the vials back into her bag. Frighteningly competent, that woman.

Tony certainly did have a type.

Though that type didn't always want to have him. Or at least not to keep.

Natasha pulled a glove off, licked her finger and held it up to the air. Tony hovered and watched in fascination. She glared at the dirt, then abruptly dropped to her stomach, holding her bared hand about an inch from the surface.

"If the people who took him were being smart, they went south," she said, still on the ground. "There's water—or something resembling water—in that direction."

Tony wondered if JARVIS's systems could have told him that, too. He'd have to try to work it out once he got back home. "We don't know if the water here is drinkable," he pointed out.

"He's used to rough conditions," Natasha said, getting up, putting her glove back on, and then brushing herself off. "And SHIELD has kits for testing and cleaning water. He'd have one with him."

"I don't have one of those," Tony said. "Why don't I have one of those?"

"Probably because SHIELD never sent you to kill anyone in a country known for having unhealthy water," she said. "If it comes to it, you can use mine."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome," she said, absently, her eyes directed southward. "We should go on foot, I think. We don't want to barrel past him."

A few hours later, there was still no sign of Clint but night was falling. There continued to be no trace of animals or insects or any life apart from this planet's version of plants. All the stars and constellations were very different from home and it was getting to be more than a little creepy.

Then Tony saw the bodies.

Multiple bodies, though, and they only had one person missing. He looked over at Natasha and she'd realized the same thing—this was excellent news.

Three big guys, all out for the count, and they had the same general look as the people who'd taken Clint. One turned out to be dead and the other two were unconscious, their hands tied behind their backs. Natasha checked on the knots and nodded approvingly.

Afterwards, they swept the area, and Tony saw something glimmering on the ground not far away from the corpses and focused on it. "Widow, found one of the Hawk's arrowheads."

"Don't pick it up," she said and he pulled back his glove before he could touch it. She came over and pointed her flashlight at the ground, falling to her knees. She picked up a stone and drew a line in the dirt pointing in the direction the point of the arrowhead was facing, then carefully picked it up. She held it up in front of her flashlight, brow furrowed slightly as she examined it on all sides.

"Good sign or bad sign?" Tony asked.

"The best," she said, her face relaxing again. "It was deliberately placed and—if you look—there are strikes on the ground around it. Clint did that on purpose, let me know it hadn't fallen by accident. The lack of blood on the arrowhead means he's not in any more danger; his way of saying that it was only these three involved as far as he knows. So, he'll head to water, or whatever this planet has, and he'll hide himself there and wait for backup. If he begins to worry that backup won't arrive, he'll leave another sign for us to find and... likely backtrack to see if whoever was sent to back him up ran into trouble. Which means that we should get some sleep. We're more likely to miss him in the dark and those goons aren't going to wake up for a few more hours. We can question them in the morning."

"You guys know each other really well," Tony said. Natasha scratched more deeply at the ground, scarring it in the shape of an arrow pointing the way they'd be heading tomorrow.

"There's no one knows me better," she said. "I'm going to create a shelter under those trees over there. You might not feel it, but the wind is picking up."

Tony followed her to the small grove and helped her create a barricade against the elements. She also placed some branches in a rough circle around the shelter—a warning system, she explained, just in case.

"So, you and Clint—it's a best buddies sort of thing, right?" Tony half-asked, half-stated.

"Something like that," she said. "Are you going to sleep in the suit or did you want to join me in here? There's room."

"Sleeping in this thing always does make my back ache in the mornings," Tony said. He got the suit off and compacted it, shivering as the wind hit him, and then ducked into the shelter. Natasha was unzipping her pack—which apparently unrolled into being a ground cover—and she motioned for Tony sit down first.

"You're bigger than I am," she said matter-of-factly. He rested against the tree and tried not to tense up when she sat between his legs, her back pressed against his chest. It had been, _damn_ , over three months since he'd been so intimate with a woman, ever since Pepper had broken things off with him.

Natasha pulled her coat off and apparently that unzipped too, into a serviceable blanket with sleeves—and it broke his brain a little that SHIELD made their own snuggies. She tucked one of his arms into the sleeve and he got the picture, pulling the snuggie on so that it covered both of them. Between their shelter and Natasha's body, he could barely feel the cold anymore.

Unfortunately, he could definitely feel Natasha, who was somewhat distracting as she wiggled herself into a comfortable position. Even after she settled down, he could still feel the echoes of her movements lingering against his body. He wondered if she'd get offended if he got hard.

He wondered if there was any possible way he could _avoid_ getting hard.

"You're thinking too loudly," Natasha said. She twisted slightly, leaning against his left arm and looking up at him. "You'll never sleep with your mind going five-hundred miles an hour, Tony. What is it this time—robots? Jetpacks? Math equations?"

There were a thousand different things he could tell her. Millions. He absolutely shouldn't tell her the truth, especially not when she was so close to his vulnerable parts.

She raised her eyebrows slightly, waiting for his answer.

"You," Tony said. And maybe he was going to tell the truth after all. "I'm thinking about you."

That caught her full attention. "Oh? I thought all your interest in me was snuffed out when you found out I'd been lying to you about everything."

"It definitely was," Tony said. "This is a little newer than that."

"Blunt," she said, but a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Is this why you were feeling me out about how close I am to Clint?"

"Possibly," he said. Not consciously, but maybe the thought had been hiding at the back of his mind. "So, you and Clint—is that a thing? Or maybe it's none of my business and I should back off?"

"I don't mind you asking," Natasha said. She traced up the center line of his bodysuit with the back of her hand, her smile widening when he shivered under her touch. "Sex and intimacy aren't always related, Tony, though I'm sure you already know that. Clint's attractive but, no, we've never had sex. Probably won't. Never been relevant to our relationship. Does that answer your question?"

"I think it does. Okay, not Clint. Anyone else?" he asked, but he was pretty sure of the answer.

"Not currently," she said.

"How would you feel about a date?" he asked. "Once we've retrieved Clint, of course, and gotten back to Earth safely."

Natasha narrowed her eyes slightly, her gaze dropping down to his mouth and then back up to his eyes. She lifted up in a graceful motion, pressing her lips against his. She was warm but decisive, and his eyes closed instinctively, his mouth opening. Her tongue teased at him but didn't venture inside. It felt... cautious, as if she was surveying a prospective battlefield. Tony tested her back, traced his tongue over her lower lip, the corners of her mouth tilting up in a smile.

When she pulled away, Tony couldn't stop his disappointed sigh.

"A date," she said. "I'll take to you to Uncle Vanya's. It's only a few blocks off Central Park. I'll get you the... ah, the lamb—you'll like it—and then we'll go out drinking." She paused for a moment. "Tony, what are the chances you put out on the first date?"

Tony laughed, hiding his mouth against his shoulder, then said, "Things go well enough, I bet you can persuade me."

Natasha watched him steadily, her amusement bright and tempting. He studied her back for a long moment—the slight curl to her hair, the sharpness of her chin, that will-o'-wisp challenge beckoning at him in her eyes. He wondered if he'd ever know all her secrets, if he'd ever truly know _her_.

Maybe or maybe not, but trying sounded like a whole lot of fun.

_the end_


End file.
